Mike Nesmith
December 30, 1942 - December 10, 2021












It seems impossible that 3/4's of the Monkees are now gone. Of course the Cowsills were Monkees fans and vice versa. A November 7, 1967 newspaper article about the C's says, "Then there was talk of Mike Nesmith, stocking-hatted member of The Monkees who went away from one of their performances speechless." Susan, along with The Continental Drifter's recording one of Mike's songs, "Some Of Shelly's Blues." And The Cowsills and The Monkees could be found side by side in the teen magazines like 'The Monkees & The Cowsills - Their Passions & Pains' in Movie TV Pin-Ups in October 1968. Rest well Papa Nez. We will miss you!


The New York Times writes:

Michael Nesmith, the 'Quiet Monkee,' Is Dead at 78

He shot to fame as a member of a made-for-TV rock group, but he denied that he was the group's only "real" musician. He went on to create some of the first music videos.

Michael Nesmith, who rocketed to fame as the contemplative, wool-cap-wearing member of the Monkees in 1966, then went on to a diverse career that included making one of the rock era’s earliest music videos and winning the first Grammy Award for video, died on Friday at his home in Carmel Valley, Calif. He was 78.

Jason Elzy, the head of public relations for Rhino Records, the label that represents the Monkees, said the cause was heart failure.

Mr. Nesmith was a struggling 23-year-old singer and songwriter when he saw an advertisement in Variety seeking "4 insane boys" for "acting roles in new TV series." Two aspiring television producers, Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, inspired by the Beatles' movies, were hoping to make a TV series about the zany antics of a rock band - not a real rock band (although the Lovin' Spoonful was briefly considered for the job), but actors with musical backgrounds who could create the illusion of a band.

The four members were picked to fit types. Davy Jones, a British vocalist, was the cute scamp; Micky Dolenz, the drummer, was the wild jokester; and Peter Tork, the bass player, was the lovable dim bulb. Mr. Nesmith, a guitarist, was variously described as the cerebral Monkee, the introspective Monkee, the sardonic Monkee, the quiet Monkee.

"He has that dry Will Rogers sense of humor," Mr. Dolenz told Rolling Stone in 2012, characterizing Mr. Nesmith's real persona. "Tha'’s probably one of the reasons they cast him.”

The show made its debut in September 1966, and though it lasted only two seasons, the Monkees became a cultural reference point, thanks largely to their best-selling albums (which featured a lot of studio musicians and backup singers, especially early on). Mr. Nesmith, who wrote and produced some Monkees songs, had the reputation of being the only “real” musician in the group, but in his 2017 memoir, “Infinite Tuesday,” he disputed that.

"It would always seem wildly ironic to me that I was the one given credit in the press for being the 'only musician' in the Monkees," he wrote. "Nothing was further from the truth.”

But he was musician enough to have a modest solo career after Monkee mania faded at the end of the 1960s, and that led him into a role in music-television history.

In 1977 he recorded a song called "Rio" for the Island Records label, which asked him to make some kind of promotional film for it.

"They wanted me to stand in front of a microphone and sing," Mr. Nesmith was quoted as saying in the 2011 book "I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution,” by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum. But he did something different.

"I wrote a series of cinematic shots: me on a horse in a suit of light, me in a tux in front of a 1920s microphone, me in a Palm Beach suit dancing with a woman in a red dress, women with fruit on their head flying through the air with me," he said.

"As we edited these images," he added, "an unusual thing started to emerge: The grammar of film, where images drove the narrative, shifted over to where the song drove the narrative, and it didn't make any difference that the images were discontinuous. It was hyper-real. Even people who didn’t understand film, including me, could see this was a profound conceptual shift."

Almost by accident, he had made one of the first music videos. It got some play in Europe, but Mr. Nesmith was struck by the fact that there was no outlet in the United States for showing such works, which a few other pop and rock stars were also beginning to make.






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